Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot

I’m sorry to hear about today’s layoffs at the Philadelphia Inquirer, particularly so soon into the new year. I thought the quality of the paper has been slipping overall particularly for the past few weeks, but I don’t blame the reporters and paper’s production staff for that.

As a subscriber to the newspaper and a commentator of sorts, I seriously have to wonder about the decision making behind the paper’s content beyond hard news, mainly concerning features and editorial writing. For whatever my opinion is worth in these matters, I should say that that’s where the paper is shooting itself in the foot, and I think that trickles down all over the place and translates into loss of circulation and advertising revenue.

The subscriber base for the paper will probably always be composed of high-school-to-college-educated (associates, bachelors or advanced degreed) professionals who may drift somewhat towards the right ideologically (maybe 30 percent or so) but basically range from moderate/independent to liberal (60-plus percent or so). I don’t believe the audience for the Inquirer associates itself with Philadelphia in quite the same way as a reader of the Philadelphia Daily News, which is appropriate since they are two publications with distinct differences in tone and content that are more important than their few similarities.

It’s important to mention this because the Inquirer has been trying for the last couple of years to redefine itself as some kind of conservative voice in the hope of increasing its market share at the expense of the writers (and Tony Auth) who produce the reality-based content; that is the only possible explanation I can come up with for highlighting people such as Kevin Ferris and Jonathan Last who, beyond being mediocre writers, plainly exist to please this elusive demographic (which, as far as I’m concerned, has plenty of other media outlets to go to in search of content that is desirable to them, further compounding what I believe is a bad business practice). Trudy Rubin and Chris Satullo are the paper’s only prominent writers who craft their content in a manner that, I believe, is read and appreciated by the paper’s true target audience.

Of course, I don’t have the acumen to decipher all the numbers: circulation, revenue, cost of business operation, impact of the new contract, etc. But I have been reading this paper for a long time, and frankly, I could see this coming, especially given the cutthroat ownership of Bruce Toll, Brian Tierney, and the rest of the bunch at Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC.

And as long as I’m discussing the Inquirer, I want to comment on two recent editorial developments.

1) Longtime readers may not have noticed that a new Secretary General of the U.N. was named, because when the Inquirer ran the story several weeks ago, it appeared almost at the end of the U.S. and World News section behind a legion of ads for the Macy’s department store and male enhancement products.

2) The Editorial Board recently named former mayor Wilson Goode “Citizen Of The Year” because of his work with a Philadelphia-based organization called Amachi, which mentors the children of incarcerated parents.

I would never begrudge recognizing Goode for his accomplishments, but when discussing his public service, it must be pointed out that he was a terrible mayor; the incompetence shown in the bombing of the MOVE compound on Osage Avenue resulting in the destruction of an entire city block of row homes was, unfortunately, emblematic of his civic stewardship. His legendary fiscal mismanagement of this city created a mess that, somehow, Ed Rendell (who followed Goode as mayor) was able to rectify with the considerable help of one time-City Council President John Street and David Cohen, Rendell’s chief of staff (as opposed to the late former Philadelphia City Councilman David Cohen). Call me harsh, but I simply cannot understand how you would ignore that when writing about this man.

When reading the Inquirer, I get a sense that, for the most part, the newspaper really doesn’t understand what is important to its readership any more, assuming it even knows who its core readership really is. I don’t know what kind of turnover exists among the news staff, though I’m sure it has greatly accelerated in the months prior to now. Whatever the reason, I just see bad editorial decision making concerning the paper’s feature content all over the place.

I haven’t said anything until now about the paper’s entertainment features because, as far as I’m concerned, Tanya Barrientos, Annette John-Hall, Alfred Lubrano and especially Karen Heller are practically unreadable anyway (I’ve poked fun at Faye Flam I know, but at least she’s writing about something interesting). Aside from themselves, I’ve given up trying to figure out who they define as their audience.

I know this is a really rambling post, and I apologize for that. I just feel like I need to point out the fact that the Inquirer is really going in the wrong direction editorially, and its content has suffered. And if they straighten themselves out to the point where circulation and ad revenue go back up and they never have to endure anything like this again, that will be one of the best stories of the year.

Update 1/4: Though "A Prayer For The City" is a wonderful book, and I sadly agree with his "gooey syrup" remark about John Grogan, I'm not sure Buzz Bissinger has room to criticize other Inky staffers for "hanging on" even though they may not need the dough (and as far as I'm concerned, Stephen A. Smith is a first-class sportswriter and not a "black apologist"...he's "hit the right note" much more often than either Bob Ford or Phil Sheridan, and that's probably why he was signed by ESPN ahead of the other two).